Philippine army on defensive after killings charges
22 Feb 2007 05:27:37 GMT Source: Reuters
By Carmel Crimmins MANILA, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The Philippine military went on the defensive on Thursday after a U.N. investigator said soldiers appeared to be behind many extra-judicial killings and ahead of the release of a damning report into the murders. Armed forces chief General Hermogenes Esperon shot back at Philip Alston, the U.N's special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, who said on Wednesday the military was in a state of "almost total denial" about dealing with those responsible for the murders. "I believe that Mr Alston might be in a state of denial himself," Esperon told a packed news conference. But the army's top brass was expected to come under further pressure later on Thursday when Manila, following weeks of criticism and on Alston's recommendation, finally publishes the report of a government-created inquiry into the unsolved killing of hundreds of leftwing activists. Last month, Jose Melo, a retired supreme court judge and the head of the inquiry, told Reuters that "elements in the military" were responsible for many of the shootings. In a pre-emptive move ahead of the report's publication, the military released a copy of a letter Esperon wrote to Melo, rebutting his findings and calling his conclusions "strained, unfair and a blank accusation". The government and the military have repeatedly blamed communist rebel group, the New People's Army (NPA), for the murders, saying the organisation is purging its ranks as it did to chilling effect in the late 1980s. While Esperon has said the military will cooperate with any investigation into the murders, in his letter to Melo he said a formal internal probe would, "inevitably amount to a witch-hunt or "fishing expedition". "The armed forces can not and should not undertake any such activity," he wrote. Arroyo has called for the creation of special courts to deal with the political killings and asked the armed forces to update its rules on command responsibility. Esperon insisted on Thursday that the command procedure was sound. WHITEWASH The government has traditionally shied away from harsh punishment of the military, a powerful political force in the Philippines, where it has helped to oust two leaders and propel President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to power in 2001. Lawmaker Teodoro Casino, who is a member of Bayan Muna, a leftist group whose members have been among those killed, said Esperon's letter was "a pathetic attempt at a whitewash". Local rights group Karapatan has said more than 800 people, most of them leftwing activists, have been murdered or reported missing since 2001. Many of those killed are members of organisations the government views as fronts for the NPA, which has been waging a decades-long insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people. Arroyo declared an "all-out war" on the NPA last year and leftwing activists say the shootings of their colleagues -- frequently carried out in daylight by masked men on motorbikes -- is part of the government's counter-insurgency campaign. Alston said there did not appear to be state sanction for the killings and Esperon has said troops do not use extra-judicial executions to deal with the communist threat. But the U.N. investigator's strong indictment of the military has provoked calls for the government to finally step in and stop the shootings. "The only way to discourage executions is by punishing the perpetrators and showing that the state does not sanction murder," said an editorial in The Philippine Star. (Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco)
